Imagine this: it’s been a busy day at work, you just got home and you’re trying to make dinner, but the ingredients you need aren’t where they’re supposed to be. They are scattered throughout your pantry and cabinets and not organized in any way. You try to power through the mess; however, you end up leaving ingredients out because you can’t find them, and the meal takes so long to finish that by the time it’s ready, you’re hangry, and even worse you now have a hangry spouse, and your child got tired of waiting, so they filled up on snacks and doesn’t want the meal now – YIKES!
Much like your busy evening, today’s fast-paced business environment makes it necessary for employees to have an organized, central location to get the information they need to get their work accomplished. If they get to a repository of information that is disorganized or doesn’t include the information they’re looking for, they might be like your hungry child that finds the information they need elsewhere, which could be outdated, error-filled information. This blog explains what process libraries are, how APQC’s Process Classification Framework can jumpstart your efforts, and provides a couple examples on how organizations benefit from using process libraries.
What is a Process Library?
Organizations create process libraries so they can house all the knowledge related to processes and process management in a central repository accessible by every employee at the organization. Gilead Sciences, who recently presented on a webinar, shared that they were struggling with disorganized process content, leading to inefficiencies and inconsistencies in how they execute their processes. The webinar presenter, Carol Southwood, said that if Gilead could take their process and knowledge management to the next level, they could potentially generate significant cost savings, increase employee satisfaction, and drive more predictable outcomes in its research, justifying the value of process libraries.
How Organizations Use Process Libraries
When organizations embark on their journey to create a process library, they may not know where to start. Remember the story from the beginning of my blog; have you ever tried to organize a pantry? The hardest part is getting started. Anytime you set off to organize something, it’s good to understand everything you must organize. For a pantry, maybe start by pulling everything out to your kitchen counter, then group it by like items, throw out the bad stuff, and then put things back into the pantry in a way that makes sense in how you use the items, placing like items together, etc.
Much like the pantry story, organizations need to understand what process knowledge they have to organize, and one way they can do that, without starting from scratch is leveraging APQC’s Process Classification Framework (PCF)®. Although it is designed as a process framework, the PCF provides a hierarchy of processes and process categories that can be used to classify content by moving from broad categories (e.g., Procurement) to increasingly narrow ones (e.g., Process/Review Requisitions). Our recent frameworks survey found that nearly one-third of respondents leverage a process framework for content management; primarily using it as a taxonomy to organize their process knowledge.
Centralized Knowledge Enables Process Work
One organization I interviewed last year, Cargill, faced challenges related to knowledge silos that made it difficult for employees to find and reuse resources like process models. In addition to content management challenges, Cargill’s Stacey Vokrot-Mello said that the absence of taxonomy integration with modeling created multiple versions of “truth,” inconsistency of key content captured, and insufficient stakeholder engagement.
To transform process modeling at Cargill, they strengthened its taxonomy, rolled out a standardized approach to process modeling, ultimately establishing a single source of truth for its process documentation.
Learn More
Organization is not an easy task, but having processes and knowledge in one spot for staff can lead to improved employee satisfaction, and a more productive workforce. Learn more about process libraries, taxonomies, and content management in the following APQC resources: